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October 2017

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Germany: The Progressives’ Post-Election Meltdown by Vijeta Uniyal

By on October 9th, 2017

On election night, around 400 leftist agitators gathered outside the Cologne’s central railway station, chanting, “Whoever is silent, is complicit.”

The irony of this moment should not be overlooked. The German left was not only silent when thousands of migrant men raped and sexually assaulted 1,200 women on New Year’s Eve of 2016, but also, during the weeks that followed, when they tried to bully the female victims into silence by calling them racists and liars for daring to identifying their attackers as migrants.

With the AfD in the Bundestag, the country’s political landscape finally reflects the actual political mood of the country. It is a view that has been completely missing since Germany’s self-inflicted migrant crisis began two years ago.

The German voters certainly spoke in last month’s general election, but the establishment in Berlin is having a difficult time coming to terms with what they said.

The right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), winning 12.6 percent of the vote, became the third-largest party in the German parliament by securing 94 of the 700-odd Bundestag seats. In states that used to be East Germany, the AfD got 20.5% of the vote, second after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU).

The election result was not only a big breakthrough for the AfD — created just four years ago — but also a historic debacle for the two major parties that have dominated the country’s post-war political landscape for almost seven decades.

Chancellor Merkel’s conservative CDU, with 33% of the vote, suffered its worst election result since 1949, and so did the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the world’s oldest Socialist party, with 20.5% of the vote.

News of the AfD’s strong electoral showing triggered far-left protests across Germany. On election night, the German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported:

“The crowd [in Berlin] was continuing to grow outside the building where the AfD were celebrating their historic election result. Protestors chanted slogans such as, ‘Racism is not an alternative,’ ‘AfD is a bunch of racists,’ and ‘Nazis out!'”

Far-leftists protest the election gains of the Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD), in Berlin, on September 24, 2017. (Photo by Jens Schlueter/Getty Images)

Also on election night, around 400 leftist agitators gathered outside the Cologne’s central railway station, chanting, “Whoever is silent, is complicit.”

The irony of this moment should not be overlooked. The German left was not only silent when thousands of migrant men raped and sexually assaulted 1,200 women on New Year’s Eve of 2016 on that very place, but also, during the weeks that followed, when they tried to bully the female victims into silence by calling them racists and liars for daring to identifying their attackers as migrants.

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Multiculturalism Is Splintering the West by Giulio Meotti *****

By on October 9th, 2017

Multiculturalism is leading to the “partition”, the separation of European societies. – Alexandre Mandel, author of the new book Partition: A Chronicle of the Islamist Secession in France.

Under European multiculturalism, Muslim women lost many rights they should have had in Europe. Multiculturalism is, in fact, based on the legalization of a parallel sharia society, which is founded on the rejection of Western values, above all equality and freedom.

The European establishment closed its eyes while Muslim supremacists were violating the rights of its own people.

The European Union’s official statistics on terrorism are dramatic:

“In 2016, a total of 142 failed, foiled and completed attacks were reported by eight EU Member States. More than half (76) of them were reported by the United Kingdom. France reported 23 attacks, Italy 17, Spain 10, Greece 6, Germany 5, Belgium 4 and the Netherlands 1 attack. 142 victims died in terrorist attacks, and 379 were injured in the EU. 1,002 persons were arrested for terrorist offences in 2016”.

These countries all tried to integrate Muslim communities, but all came to the same dead end. “As long as that continues, the failure of integration will pose a mortal threat to Europe”, the Wall Street Journal wrote after a suicide bombing that killed 22 people in Manchester. According to a new book by the French reporter Alexandre Mandel, Partition: Chronique de la sécession islamiste en France (“Partition: A Chronicle of the Islamist Secession in France”), multiculturalism is leading to the separation of European societies.

It is also leading to constant waves of terror attacks. Last August, on a single day, Islamists killed 20 Europeans in Barcelona and Finland. A month later, they slaughtered two girls in Marseille, and in Birmingham a Shiite boy was brutally wounded. That is the deadly harvest of Europe’s multiculturalism. It is the most romanticized, seductive European ideology since Communism.

There is an “increasingly permanent chain of ‘suspended communities’ nesting within nations throughout the West”, the American historian Andrew Michta recently wrote.

“The emergence of these enclaves, reinforced by elite policies of multiculturalism, group identity politics, and the deconstruction of Western heritage, has contributed to the fracturing of Western European nations”.

Only twenty minutes separate the Marais, the elegant quarter of Paris where Charlie Hebdo’s offices were located, and Gennevilliers, a suburb that houses 10,000 Muslims, where the Kouachi brothers, who gunned down Charlie Hebdo’s cartoonists, were born and raised. In Birmingham there is a suburb, Sparkbrook, which has produced one-tenth of the England’s jihadists. All of Europe’s biggest cities have separated enclaves where Islamic apartheid now proliferates.

There, Burqas and beards mean something. Dressing has always symbolized loyalty to a lifestyle, a civilization. When Mustafa Kemal Atatürk abolished the Caliphate in Turkey, he forbade beards for men and veils for women. The proliferation of Islamic symbols in Europe’s ghettos now demarcates the separation of these suburbs. The new leader of England’s UK Independence Party (UKIP), Henry Bolton, recently said that the Britain is “buried” by Islam and “swamped” by multiculturalism.

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HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Homeland Security Uncovers Massive Immigration Failures The devastating consequences for national security. Michael Cutler

By on October 9th, 2017

President Trump has been rightfully demanding that aliens who are citizens of countries that have an involvement with terrorism must undergo “extreme vetting.”

This is certainly an important and commonsense requirement. However, the computer systems used by both Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) inside the United States are unable to provide CBP inspectors at ports of entry the data they need to prevent transnational criminals and international terrorists from entering the country. Nor can these systems provide the vital information and records to USCIS adjudications officers that would allow them to prevent aliens present in the United States from improperly acquiring immigration benefits such as political asylum, lawful immigrant status and even United States citizenship.

Simply stated, today — more than 16 years after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 — the effective vetting of any alien seeking entry into the United States or for any alien seeking immigration benefits has been elusive goals.

The September 28, 2017 Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General’s (DHS OIG) report, “CBP’s IT Systems and Infrastructure Did Not Fully Support Border Security Operations,” noted:

CBP’s IT systems and infrastructure did not fully support its border security objective of preventing the entry of inadmissible aliens to the country. The slow performance of a critical pre-screening system greatly reduced Office of Field Operations officers’ ability to identify any passengers who may represent concerns, including national security threats. Further, incoming passenger screening at U.S. international airports was hampered by frequent system outages that created passenger delays and public safety risks. The outages required that CBP officers rely on backup systems that weakened the screening process, leading to officers potentially being unable to identify travelers that may be attempting to enter the United States with harmful intent.

On September 25, 2017, a report was published by DHS OIG on the distressing issue of individuals with multiple identities in US fingerprint enrollment records receiving immigration benefits. This disastrous situation has profound national security and public safety implications. Yet the report stated in part:

As of April 24, 2017, 9,389 aliens USCIS identified as having multiple identities had received an immigration benefit. When taking into account the most current immigration benefit these aliens received, we determined that naturalization, permanent residence, work authorization, and temporary protected status represent the greatest number of benefits, accounting for 8,447 or 90 percent of the 9,389 cases. Benefits approved by USCIS for the other 10 percent of cases, but not discussed in this report, include applications for asylum and travel documents. According to USCIS, receiving a deportation order or having used another identity does not necessarily render an individual ineligible for immigration benefits.

That last sentence should give us all serious cause for pause.

Apparently the “get to yes” philosophy of the Obama administration still permeates management at USCIS where adjudications officers were ordered to do whatever they had to do in order to approve virtually all applications for various immigration benefits.

We will, a bit later on, take a look back at how the Obama administration dismantled a program that sought to uncover immigration fraud and imbue the immigration benefits program with integrity.

But let’s first consider some additional facts.

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Why Columbus Still Deserves His Day A look at the famous explorer’s true motivations for undertaking his journeys. Joseph Klein

By on October 9th, 2017

Left-wingers view Christopher Columbus’s forays to the “New World” as the original sin of imperialist, capitalist exploitation of indigenous peoples living in a heretofore untouched paradise. There are calls to replace “Columbus Day” with “Indigenous Peoples Day.” Statues honoring the intrepid explorer have been vandalized, with the New York City-based Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement threatening more destruction. “For the occasion of Columbus Day, October 9th, one of the most vile ‘holidays’ of the year,” its website warns, “the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement is calling for collectives all over the country to take action against this day and in support of indigenous people in the US and abroad who have been victims of colonialism and genocide.” Ironically, the leftists demonizing Columbus and calling for removal of memorials celebrating his explorations are following in the footsteps of the Ku Klux Klan, who did the same in the 1920’s.

Former President Barack Obama seemed to be onboard the revisionist history train when he used his 2016 Columbus Day proclamation to complain of “the pain and suffering reflected in the stories of Native Americans who had long resided on this land prior to the arrival of European newcomers.” He bemoaned a past “marked by too many broken promises, as well as violence, deprivation, and disease.” He called for Americans to remember the “communities who suffered,” and to “embrace the multiculturalism that defines the American experience.”

In contrast, President Donald Trump proclaimed this Monday as Columbus Day without any of the revisionist, multicultural gibberish that appeared in Barack Obama’s 2016 proclamation. President Trump’s proclamation noted that “the permanent arrival of Europeans … was a transformative event that undeniably and fundamentally changed the course of human history and set the stage for the development of our great Nation.” He called Columbus a “man of faith, whose courageous feat brought together continents and has inspired countless others to pursue their dreams and convictions — even in the face of extreme doubt and tremendous adversity.” In short, President Trump recognized Columbus as an extraordinary man of his time who set in motion a chain of events that would lead ultimately to the creation of the world’s leading beacon of hope, opportunity and freedom.

To recognize Columbus’s accomplishments is not to say that his motives and actions were all heroic. He sought riches and had no hesitation taking back to Spain what he and his men could transport. He believed he was representing a more civilized society, which he thought justified his exercising dominion over the people he encountered in the lands he explored. In such ways, Columbus was very much a man of his times. However, Columbus was believed by some historians to have been ahead of his times with respect to at least one of his reasons for wanting to undertake his risky voyages of exploration.

The year that Columbus set out on his first voyage to what he mistakenly thought was Asia – 1492 – was also the year that his patrons, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain, issued their infamous order of expulsion, ordering Jews and Muslims who would not convert to Catholicism to leave Spain. Some Jews risked execution or imprisonment by feigning conversion, while secretly continuing to practice their Jewish faith. These “Marranos” were believed by a number of scholars who have studied Christopher Columbus’s life to have included Columbus himself. They believe that his motivation for undertaking his journey of exploration was at least in part to discover a land to which Jews could safely emigrate.

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The American Jewish Historical Society Hosts Destroy Israel Event Hamas, Hezbollah and BDS in a Jewish organization. Daniel Greenfield

By on October 9th, 2017

The American Jewish Historical Society was founded to study and preserve Jewish history. These days it’s instead partnering with Jewish Voice for Peace: an anti-Israel BDS hate group that defends anti-Semitism and which sponsored talks by an anti-Semite who accused Jews of drinking blood.

The fruits of the AJHS and JVP partnership have been a series of events attacking Israel.

Coming up in late October is “The Balfour Declaration: Support for a Jewish Homeland or Jewish State?”

The two speakers are Robert Herbst, the coordinator of the Westchester chapter of JVP, and Jonathan Kuttab, who advocates a one-state solution for eliminating Israel. He had tweeted, “EU no longer considers #Hamas a terrorist group. Time for US to do same.”

Kuttab has defended Islamic anti-Semitism by claiming that the “distrust Moslems feel towards Jews” is due to “two acts of betrayal by Jewish tribes against the Prophet.” And that Jews suffer from a “Holocaust Syndrome” of entitlement. He justified hijacking planes, described suicide bombers as “taking the supreme sacrifice” and defended Hezbollah as “an armed-resistance movement”

He has claimed that the “Jewish community gradually consolidated its power, wealth, and influence in all sectors of society” especially in “crucial sectors like banking, finance, media” where “their influence both as individuals and an organized community far exceeded their numbers” and that their power strengthens “conspiracy theories about ‘Jewish control’ that are reminiscent of the infamous “’Protocols of the Elders of Zion.’”

Robert Herbst and Jonathan Kuttab are both supporters of a one-state plan for eliminating Israel.

The American Jewish Historical Society is co-sponsoring a JVP anti-Israel event by two opponents of Israel, one of whom has defended Hamas. An organization that hands out the Emma Lazarus Award, named after a passionate Zionist, at its posh dinners is hosting attacks on the existence of Israel.

The “Jewish Homeland” or “Jewish State” argument is a hook for contending that the Balfour Declaration didn’t endorse Israel, but some sort of Jewish Bantustan within a Muslim country.

That worked so well for the Christians and Jews of the Middle East.

The American Jewish Historical Society is not only co-sponsoring a one-state event by an anti-Israel hate group. But it’s also hosting it at the Center for Jewish History’s headquarters. AJHS is a component of the Center for Jewish History. And the partnership between AJHS and JVP sheds light on the controversy over the appointment of David N. Myers, an anti-Israel activist, to head the Center for Jewish History.

During the Myers controversy, the Center took pains to disassociate Myers and themselves from JVP because a JVP handout had listed him as a “JVP Academic Advisory Board Member.” But in reality the Center, through AJHS, has an ongoing relationship with JVP.

The Balfour event was not AJHS’ only partnership with JVP. In December, the AJHS will feature “Rubble Rubble”, a play by Dan Fishback based on his trip to Israel. Fishback is a BDS supporter and a member of the JVP Artists Council. His goal is to “normalize Jewish anti-Zionism”. AJHS and JVP members get discounted admission. The venue is once again the Center for Jewish History. Specifically the Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium at CJH. Leo Forchheimer’s philanthropy had left its mark on Israel. What would he think if he knew the anti-Israel purposes that CJH is putting his gift to?

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Even ‘diversity educators’ can’t take the snowflakes complaining about ‘microaggressions’ By Thomas Lifson

By on October 9th, 2017

The mentality of grievance obsession, now widely held throughout the academic world, is a path toward madness. Once a hunt for invisible “microaggressions” begins, there is no end point, only a spiral into angry obsession or despair.

Ian Miles Cheong of the Daily Caller brings us news of the ultimate expression of the self-destructiveness of political correctness.

So-called “Diversity Educators” are suffering from burnout due to the “emotional weight” of their jobs, according to a recent academic journal article published this week in the Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice.

The study, written by University of North Carolina-Charlotte professor Ryan Miller and six colleagues from the University of North Texas, interviewed seven interviewed diversity educators from a “predominantly white research institution” who claim that they suffer from “compassion fatigue,” “burnout,” and “racial battle fatigue” in their efforts to combat microaggressions on campus.

According to Miller, the burnout is caused by the diversity educators’ “consistent exposure to various microaggressions” from students who don’t see things their way. He notes that these microaggressions have been conceptualized by some scholars “as forms of assault and torture.”

The article, which was highlighted Friday by Campus Reform, describes the burnout as a “gradual wearing down of individuals entrenched in the work of helping others as diversity educators.”

“Team members described the emotional toll of facilitating diversity education, which sometimes led to fatigue, burnout, and disengagement,” Miller states. He adds that they “found it difficult to separate their identities and experiences from the topics at hand in a facilitation.”

This last point is a characteristic instance of self-obsession, which is required for a hunt for microaggression to even be conceptualized. The following point, however, is entirely rational in a limited way (i.e., if you are self-obsessed)

The diversity educators struggle with feeling underqualified for their jobs and suffer from a desire to “prove their legitimacy to others,” according to Miller, who proposed paying them higher salaries and giving them more recognition for their efforts.

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Merkel’s Bloc Agrees to Limit Number of Refugees Entering Germany Christian Democrats set cap at 200,000 annually in a largely symbolic concession to her Bavarian allies By Andrea Thomas

By on October 9th, 2017

BERLIN—Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc agreed to limit the number of refugees allowed to enter Germany annually, in an attempt to bridge differences on migration and form a much-needed united front in coalition talks.

Sunday’s agreement comes two weeks after national elections brought a victory but also the worst turnout in nearly 70 years for Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats and their Bavarian Christian Social Union allies, who are also the most vocal in-house critic of her migration policy.

The bloc agreed to limit to 200,000 annually the number of people allowed to enter Germany for humanitarian reasons. The conservatives pledged at the same time that people wouldn’t be turned back at the German border, expressing their support for the right to seek asylum in Germany and for the Geneva refugee convention.

“We continue with our efforts to permanently reduce the number of people fleeing to Germany and Europe,” the draft agreement seen by The Wall Street Journal said. “We want to ensure that the total number of admissions out of humanitarian reasons…doesn’t exceed 200,000 people a year.”

This limit would be amended if an international crisis warrants it, the paper said.

Roughly 890,000 asylum seekers entered Germany in 2015 alone, followed by 280,000 in 2016. An annual upper limit of 200,000 is unlikely to be reached this year, according to recent estimates from the interior ministry, because fewer than 125,000 asylum seekers entered Germany this year through the end of August.

“We have a common understanding that we have to set a limit because we are otherwise overburdening a society,” Jens Spahn, a prominent critic of Ms. Merkel’s migration policy and member of her party’s executive committee, told public broadcaster ARD on Sunday. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Thousands Rally in Barcelona Against Catalan Independence High turnout represents rare show of strength for pro-union movement By Jeannette Neumann and Giovanni Legorano See note please

By on October 9th, 2017

WHAT IS VARGAS LLOSA DOING IN CATALONIA OPPOSING INDEPENDENCE? HE IS A PERUVIAN WRITER WHO UNSUCCESSFULLY RAN FOR THE PRESIDENCY OF HIS COUNTRY…..HE LOBBIES AND WRITES ANTI=ISRAEL SCREED FOR PALARAB INDEPENDENCE…WHY NOT CATALONIA? AS FOR HIS NOBEL PRIZE READ HIS MEDIOCRE NOVELS…..RSK
BARCELONA—Hundreds of thousands of Spaniards gathered in Barcelona on Sunday to decry Catalonia’s secessionist push, a bid by pro-union groups to build momentum against a unilateral declaration of independence that could come as soon as this week.

The demonstration in central Barcelona, the capital of Spain’s Catalonia region, is a rare show of strength for the pro-union movement, whose gatherings have typically attracted several thousand protesters in recent years, compared with the hundreds of thousands routinely mobilized by pro-independence groups.

On Sunday, though, Barcelona’s streets were filled with an atypical sight: people waving red-and-yellow Spanish flags, unfurled alongside Catalan regional flags.

“For some time now, nationalism has been wreaking havoc in Catalonia and that’s why we’re here, to stop it,” Nobel Literature Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa told the 930,000 people gathered, according to organizers. Local police in Barcelona put that figure at closer to 350,000. Such discrepancies are common.

“We are fed up with this situation. We haven’t been out on the street until now, but this time around has been so surreal, so unfair, that we had to do something,” Juan Maldonado, a 52-year-old electrician from Barcelona said, as people chanted “here are the other Catalans.”

Polls by the region’s survey agency indicate that more than a third of Catalans support an independent Catalonia, although sentiment could have shifted following the Oct. 1 independence referendum, which was marred by clashes between police and voters and declared illegal by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

Catalan President Carles Puigdemont is expected to address Catalonia’s regional parliament on Tuesday and could make a declaration of independence.

“We will prevent independence from materializing,” Mr. Rajoy said in an interview published Sunday by top Spanish daily El País. “I can say with absolute frankness that it won’t happen.” He said he didn’t rule out invoking constitutional powers that would allow him to seize control of the regional Catalan government. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Christopher Columbus, Great American Attacks on the explorer are aimed at Western civilization. By Angela Rocco DeCarlo *****

By on October 9th, 2017

Christopher Columbus was an American-style entrepreneur. He conceived his project alone, suffering in poverty for nearly a decade while raising the money to sail west in search of a backdoor route to the Indies of the East. Most of us can’t begin to grasp the scope of Columbus’s insatiable curiosity, intellectual drive and accomplishments of navigation. Most of us couldn’t find the hamper without a GPS.

Leaving dry land in August 1492 Columbus depended entirely on his brilliant mind, experience and research to guide him. It was common knowledge no one had ventured into that vast expanse of water—lately called the Atlantic—and lived to tell the tale.

Columbus believed he could do it. He read Ptolemy and Marco Polo. His copy of Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly’s “Imago Mundi” contained 898 margin notes in Columbus’s own hand.

Europeans had been accustomed to traveling over land to China, Japan and India to trade for goods. After the fall of Constantinople to the Muslims of the expanding Ottoman Empire in 1453, those ventures became dangerous. The sea became the salvation of European trade.

After three months at sea Columbus disembarked in a place no European knew existed. He believed he had reached the Indies, when in fact he was in the Caribbean. He never set foot on the North American continent. It was a monumental achievement, just not the one he was hoping for.

Today when everything is instantly known—or we think it is—it is impossible to understand how 15th-century European attitudes shaped Columbus. He hoped the profits from his voyage could finance the liberation of the Holy Land from Muslim domination. He also hoped to spread the word of God.

It’s intellectually dicey to judge those who lived hundreds of years ago according to modern norms. Doctors who routinely infected women during childbirth out of ignorance of the germ theory of disease are not reviled today. But European explorers who were similarly ignorant about how diseases are spread are routinely abused for the illnesses that befell inhabitants of the New World from lack of natural immunity.

The Columbian exchange benefited Old World and New by spreading knowledge of science, agriculture and nutrition. Without Columbus, the Renaissance may not have succeeded. Without his discoveries, Italians wouldn’t have marinara sauce, the Irish wouldn’t have mashed potatoes, and the Swiss wouldn’t have chocolate. Because America and its freedoms exist, children no longer contract polio and many other diseases. America saved the world from totalitarianism twice in the last century.

Today Columbus’s reputation is under siege. But those seeking to delegitimize the Genoan explorer’s legacy may actually have a larger target in mind. Statues of Columbus and tributes to his achievements are in many ways proxies for the Western tradition of freedom, liberty and the rule of law. America had better protect Columbus and win this war. There is no one else to save the world next time around.

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Saudi government allegedly funded a ‘dry run’ for 9/11 By Paul Sperry

By on October 9th, 2017

Fresh evidence submitted in a major 9/11 lawsuit moving forward against the Saudi Arabian government reveals its embassy in Washington may have funded a “dry run” for the hijackings carried out by two Saudi employees, further reinforcing the claim that employees and agents of the kingdom directed and aided the 9/11 hijackers and plotters.

Two years before the airliner attacks, the Saudi Embassy paid for two Saudi nationals, living undercover in the US as students, to fly from Phoenix to Washington “in a dry run for the 9/11 attacks,” alleges the amended complaint filed on behalf of the families of some 1,400 victims who died in the terrorist attacks 16 years ago.

The court filing provides new details that paint “a pattern of both financial and operational support” for the 9/11 conspiracy from official Saudi sources, lawyers for the plaintiffs say. In fact, the Saudi government may have been involved in underwriting the attacks from the earliest stages — including testing cockpit security.

“We’ve long asserted that there were longstanding and close relationships between al Qaeda and the religious components of the Saudi government,” said Sean Carter, the lead attorney for the 9/11 plaintiffs. “This is further evidence of that.”

Lawyers representing Saudi Arabia last month filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which may finally be headed toward trial now that Congress has cleared diplomatic-immunity hurdles. A Manhattan federal judge has asked the 9/11 plaintiffs, represented by lead law firm Cozen O’Connor, to respond to the motion by November.

Citing FBI documents, the complaint alleges that the Saudi students — Mohammed al-Qudhaeein and Hamdan al-Shalawi — were in fact members of “the Kingdom’s network of agents in the US,” and participated in the terrorist conspiracy.

They had trained at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan at the same time some of the hijackers were there. And while living in Arizona, they had regular contacts with a Saudi hijacker pilot and a senior al Qaeda leader from Saudi now incarcerated at Gitmo. At least one tried to re-enter the US a month before the attacks as a possible muscle hijacker but was denied admission because he appeared on a terrorist watch list.

Qudhaeein and Shalawi both worked for and received money from the Saudi government, with Qudhaeein employed at the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. Shalawi was also “a longtime employee of the Saudi government.” The pair were in “frequent contact” with Saudi officials while in the US, according to the filings.

During a November 1999 America West flight to Washington, Qudhaeein and Shalawi are reported to have tried multiple times to gain access to the cockpit of the plane in an attempt to test flight-deck security in advance of the hijackings.

‘The dry run reveals more of the fingerprints of the Saudi government.’
– Kristen Breitweiser

“After they boarded the plane in Phoenix, they began asking the flight attendants technical questions about the flight that the flight attendants found suspicious,” according to a summary of the FBI case files.

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